A Continuing Satire B.D. Gallof
Facing Gary Bettman
“I’ve been expecting you,” says Gary with a toothy grin and giggle.
He is sitting in a NHL team beanbag chair. He has his hands pressed together, regarding like a starving fat man contemplating some Cheesecake. He wears an official NHL cloak with the words: Big Kahuna on his chest. His eyes gleam manically from under his shadowy cowl.
I don’t know how to answer that. Any quick wit fades as they reach my lips. I just stand there stupidly, until my cell phone blips. Eklund has text messaged me:
YOU WERE RIGHT. VANCOUVER LOST IN 5 GAMES. YOU ARE MY HOCKEY HERO. I WILL PUT UP YOUR LOGOS ON YOUR BLOG…I SWEAR!
I pause a moment to savor my Round 2 prediction. It helps steel my spine against this surge of evil.
“I’ve read your blogs,” Gary starts.
Uh oh. This isn’t going to be good.
“How dare you judge me!” Gary Bettman shouts, and continues, “I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to say I’m ruining hockey. You have a right to take me out. Criticize. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was bargaining with NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a school to play hockey with the children. We left the school after we played hockey all day, and then Stan Fischler came running after us and he was crying. We went back there and they…the NBA and their commissioner, David Stern…had come and hacked off every hockey-playing arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was hit with a hockey puck right through my forehead shot by Al Iafrate. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were basketball players. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had 30 teams of those men in the NHL our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to play safe, soft hockey without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.”
“Huh?” I feel like the Geico commercial caveman after hearing that.
“Let me make it a bit clearer…I want hockey for the whole family. I want grandpa and grandma to be able to take the ice and play.”
“You bastard!” I cried, “We…we who protects hockey sanctity will not stand for this!”
“Hockey sanctity??? Hockey sanctity!?” repeats Bettman with a spittle splutter, “Where was hockey sanctity when McSorely took a stick to Brashear’s head. Where was sanctity when Betruzzi broke Moore’s neck. Where was it when Chris Simon wailed a stick on Hollaweg?”
“There will always be those situations and issues that shake hockey and go against the grain of the honor and privilege that this sport really is about,” I respond passionately, “There is not one sport that doesn’t have it. Baseball, Football, Basketball…there is not a one that doesn’t have fiascos that not only have become media sensations, and have actually made people reassess the sport from time to time. The world loves to be entertained, but then acts shocked when time-to-time, it goes to far.”
“But….”
I cut off Bettman with a sweep of my hand.
“The issues of hockey are not about diluting the product, but of markets and decisions that have curtailed it’s growth in the last decade. The issue, sir…is you.”
“Preposterous,” Gary shakes his head, “Everyone loves me. My mommy tells me so.”
“Under your watch…after David Stern of the NBA recommended you, his protégé for the position of commissioner…the NHL has lost 1.8 billion dollars in the last decade. Four teams have gone bankrupt. With you around we have had lockouts in 1992, 1994, and 2004. We have lost two Canadian teams. We have lost ESPN coverage and their marketing machine due to the 2004 lockout, and been stuck lost on Comcast’s OLN…VS…or whatever name they’ve taken up this week”
I have Bettman on the ropes. But then he stand up, and takes out the top portion of a hockey stick.
“What the hell?” I cock my head at him.
Gary grins and flicks a switch on it…and suddenly with a fiery swoosh, it becomes a lightsaber - complete with the end of a hockey stick…and it clearly has an illegal curve.
“Good lord, is that from Jaromir Jagr’s private collection?” I ask.
Gary just giggles and moves toward me.
I think I'm really in trouble this time.
To be continued…
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